And the angel said [Archive]

nagantguy

07-06-2016, 09:13 AM

and wise men still seek him.
sorry for the thread jack but, I'm doing it anyhow...

I compare the time I had with my great grandpa a little to what it might have been like walki.g with Jesus..I know blasphemy...hear me out, he never took the easy way out, would leave himself short to help others, told the truth but not in a hurtful or spiteful way, would always take a minute to teach someone , lived loving your neighbor as yourself.....now I really miss such honest straight forward men...my grandpa wasn't without sin and he never preformed any mericals that I know.of but as far as a man trying to live the life Christ outlined he did pretty well. My grandpa told a little white lie/untruth about a car he bought once, I think he turned around and sold the car and later when the guy he bought it from ask him if he liked the car grandpa said yep, like it fine. didn't mention that he'd sold it, on his death bed it still bothered him, "I just stood right there and lied to that man" he said, and he ask forgiveness for it. I was 22 or 23 when he passed and left a huge impression on me that such a little omission of full truth would bother him that badly that he would carry it to his grave, I think I get it now!

Blackwater

07-06-2016, 01:34 PM

Boaz, I think in all the Bible, there's no other more crucial passage than that one. It's the whole beginning and basis for the entire New Testament. And it began a sacrifice for us that we could never, in all our lives put together, have earned one whit of its wonders and inestimable grace. It's all grace. Nothing we could ever do in our whole lives could possibly have earned the tiniest portion of what our Lord did for us, in coming down from Heaven to show us the way, and pay the price for our sins Himself, instead of our having to pay for them. There's always balance in our finite realm. There must be to hold everything together, physically and non-physically. And he came to balance things out for us, if we'd simply accept Him and what He did for us. I will always stand in awe of what He did, and won't ever have the understanding to take it all in. But I CAN give Him my thanks, and I CAN do my best to follow Him, and do His will. And I am left feeling SO inadequate and embarassed that I can't seem to do better! It seems that everything He did for us was to keep us humble, while the world around us now seems to encourage us to be ever more haughty and self-absorbed. If there's ever been a time in the world's history, when the battle lines have been so sharply and clearly laid out, I don't have a clue when it might have been. I don't think the world has ever been more sharply and clearly divided on the simplest issues of right and wrong and good and bad. And we're at the center of it, each in our own way. I pray we'll be deemed fit for Heaven when our ends come. We are provoked and challenged and degraded as Christians at every turn, it seems. I pray for the stamina and heartiness of soul to see it all through to the end. Challenges are given to us to make us better, stronger and wiser, I think. We're certainly facing the greatest challenge ever, I think, in this "new millenium." I pray we pass the test, and meet the challenge with our very best.

And Nagantguy, it seems you were brought up by the same sort of folks I was. I miss those grand old heads SO much now! I guess I get my own straightforwardness from my father, who got it from my grandfather, who probably got it from his, and so on. You just didn't ask that quiet and generally passive old Marine what he thought unless you really wanted to know what he REALLY thought, because invariably, he'd tell you. He'd do it in a decent way, but he would NOT lie just because that's what you wanted to hear. And if you wanted to get hot about it, and make a scene, he wasn't about to shrink from that, either. But in those days, nobody wanted to be hauled up in front of a judge or go to jail over a bunch of foolishness, and they always seemed to know it was just that, even if they didn't want to admit it. They also had a way of making amens to each other without losing too much "face," too, so it'd always work out like it should in the end.

Today, every slight is a "major thing," and "accountability" is the way of everything, down to the smallest detail. If left to their own, people will always work out the little things, IF we simply LET them. We don't. We have fallen for the "It takes a village" theorum, and everybody has to have a say in what OUGHT to have happened. When have we humans EVER been like THAT???? I don't recall a time like that, do you? Leave folks alone, and they'll work things out a lot cheaper, faster and less expensively and with fewer side issues developing than we seem to think "necessary" today. I miss those times and those people SO much now! I praise their name and character, and always will. And though I try to be more like them, I falter and fail. But I'm SO glad I have their example to follow, even if I can't seem to quite measure up to them. Truly, we were both richly blessed men!